Jury selection in Stroud man's murder scheduled for Mon.

Jury selection is scheduled to start Monday for the trial of a man charged with murdering a well-liked retired school teacher from Stroud Township.

ANDREW SCOTT

Jury selection is scheduled to start Monday for the trial of a man charged with murdering a well-liked retired school teacher from Stroud Township.

Defended by attorney Thomas Sundmaker, Rico Herbert, 33, of Montrose, is charged with murder, theft, stealing a motor vehicle, burglary and abusing a corpse in the February 2012 death of Joseph DeVivo, 87.

Herbert is charged with an open count of murder, including first-, second- and third-degree murder and voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.

The prosecution is seeking the death penalty if Herbert is convicted of first-degree (premeditated) murder. If a jury convicts Herbert in the trial phase, the jury will then hear testimony in the penalty phase to determine whether he should be executed or sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Death penalty cases involve 12 regular and four alternate jurors, rather than 12 regulars and two alternates in other cases.

Pennsylvania has 190 death row inmates, according to the state Department of Corrections website. The most recent Monroe County resident sentenced to death is Michael Parrish, convicted in the 2009 fatal shootings of his girlfriend and their infant son in their Effort home.

The most recent Pennsylvania inmate executed was Gary Michael Heidnik in 1999.

Heidnik, 56, was convicted in the 1986-87 kidnappings, rapes and tortures of five women and the murders of two of those women in his Philadelphia basement.

Executions are carried out by lethal injection at the State Correctional Institution at Rockview, Centre County, according to the Department of Corrections.

According to Sundmaker, Herbert said he was surviving on money from friends, cutting hair and arranging drug deals for various customers including a man he identified only as "T.J."

DeVivo lived alone, but had a caregiver.

Herbert said he and T.J., on several occasions when DeVivo wasn't home between November 2011 and February 2012, illegally entered DeVivo's home and conducted drug deals there.

Herbert said he and T.J. were in DeVivo's home on the night of Feb. 23, when DeVivo was asleep. When T.J. told him he was going to kill DeVivo, Herbert said he didn't want to be involved and waited outside while T.J. committed the murder.

Herbert said T.J. gave him DeVivo's car, and that he was unaware at the time that DeVivo's body was in the trunk; someone else in another car came and drove T.J. away.

Herbert said he found DeVivo's cellphone and wallet containing credit cards in the center console of DeVivo's car and that he put the wallet in his pocket but never used any of the credit cards.

He said he drove DeVivo's car the next day, Feb. 24, to a family function at his grandmother's South Carolina home, where he opened the trunk and discovered the body. He said he later dumped the body in a secluded wooded area several miles away.

DeVivo's family reported him missing the next day, Feb. 25. Hours after the report was filed, police found Herbert driving DeVivo's car, with DeVivo's wallet and credit cards, in North Carolina.

Police said they apprehended Herbert when he tried fleeing on foot and charged him with obstructing a missing-person investigation. Herbert later confessed to dumping DeVivo's body, but not killing him, and told police where to find the body, which was in a secluded area in Lancaster, S.C.

Though he said T.J. killed DeVivo, Herbert is the only one charged so far in this case.

First Assistant District Attorney Michael Mancuso and District Attorney David Christine are prosecuting the case before Monroe County President Judge Margherita Patti Worthington.